
Historically, christology has been about who Jesus is. Because Jesus came to earth and said some profound things about himself, and it took us Christians a few centuries to hash out those ideas.
I know; plenty of Christians insist they’re pretty self-explanatory ideas. They read the bible, and it’s plain as day! But that’s because they, like most people, greatly lack self-awareness: It wasn’t plain as day when they first became Christian. (It certainly wasn’t plain as day before they became Christian—which is why they weren’t Christian!) It became plain as day after they were exposed to Christians who explained Jesus to them, and after they were exposed
It’s still not plain as day to a lot of Christians. For all sorts of reasons. They lack the humility to listen to other people or the Spirit, try to figure out Jesus for themselves, invent some “clever” ideas which are really just old
Yeah, much of the reason Christianity has a thousand
So let’s look at christology. Which examines a few particular areas of Christian theology:
- What Jesus teaches and does—both in the first century, back in time before he came to earth, in the future during the End Times and millennium and New Earth, and of course what he’s doing right now.
- Sin, how it affects humanity, and
precisely how Jesus conquers it. God’s kingdom, ’cause Jesus is after all its king. Also how he’s its king.- Jesus’s family. Particularly his mom, who’s a person of huge interest within
Roman Catholicism. Likewise what she did and is doing.
But most of our focus in christology is how Jesus is the primary lens through which we understand God himself. Humanity doesn’t understand him correctly without Jesus.
You look at Jesus, you see God.
If we observe Jesus closely enough, it should occur to us we’re seeing God in action.
It should’ve occurred to Jesus’s students, but unfortunately he had to spell it out for them. Probably a good thing though; it doesn’t often occur to us either.
John 14.5-11 NRSVue - 5 Thomas said to him, “Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?” 6 Jesus said to him, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. 7 If you know me, you will know my Father also. From now on you do know him and have seen him.”
- 8 Philip said to him, “Lord, show us the Father, and we will be satisfied.” 9 Jesus said to him, “Have I been with you all this time, Philip, and you still do not know me? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? 10 Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own, but the Father who dwells in me does his works. 11 Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me, but if you do not, then believe because of the works themselves.”
Jesus’s whole purpose in coming to earth was to show us the Father. Yeah, I know; plenty of Christians are gonna insist, “You’re wrong; he came to save us from sin!” And yes, he saves us from sin too. But saving us from sin also shows us the Father: It shows us the Father loves us, wants to save us, and sent us Jesus to do just that.
John 3.16-17 NRSVue - 16 “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.
- 17 “Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world but in order that the world might be saved through him.”
’Cause there are
Y’see the utter mess which can be created by bad christology? You get a seriously messed-up picture of the Father. And of Jesus. And of
Whereas Jesus is trying to bring us closer to God. He’s the way, truth, and life;
(Yes, because he’s
Bad christology.
Just as there’s such a thing as
I already brought up people who believe the Father is one way and Jesus is another; that they don’t share the same will and character. They get this idea from
Another popular pagan idea is that Jesus is teaching one thing, and his apostles another. Supposedly Jesus describes a kingdom of
Annoyingly, a lot of Christians have actually bought all this
I’ve heard
Most of us know better than to trust dispensationalists and their cherry-picking, but too often we do our own cherry-picking in its place. Christians who reject the dispensationalists, but don’t bother to read the Old Testament through the lens of Jesus either, often believe the same bushwa pagans teach. They can’t see God’s
Thing is, Jesus claims that God is his God.
Bad christology dismisses all the connections Jesus intentionally makes—because they don’t want a Jesus with a heritage, a backstory, and all that Old Testament baggage. And often they don’t want any of the New Testament baggage either; they don’t want apostles, who personally studied under Jesus, making authoritative statements which they now have to acknowledge. They wanna make the authoritative statements. They prefer Jesus all neatly packaged in a little white box. Makes their message simpler. Makes it so they don’t have to think all that hard, and
Watch out for such people. Read your bibles. Deal with these struggles, instead adopting any brain-dead mentality which rejects anything bothersome.
